1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to creating a mark-able document and processing such document containing user-made marks in any of a variety of computing environments.
2. Description of Related Art
Typical mark-able documents in existence today are often processed with optical mark readers. Such a technique is configured to read user-made marks in predefined locations on card stock forms or the like, or by evaluating areas on regular paper, e.g., standard copy paper, derived from stored information that define these locations on the page.
While useful in different applications, card stock forms (“scan forms”) and copy paper based mark-able forms have limitations and trade offs. A scan form is more expensive than a copy paper based mark-able form, but the scan form does not allow for custom printing on the form itself and typically contains only one kind of mark-able item, usually bubbles, whereas a copy paper based mark-able form is more flexible in terms of use. While thickness of a scan form makes it less likely to get bent out of shape, its thickness can pose a problem for some document feeders, especially when handling multiple forms. Thickness is typically not a problem for a copy paper based mark-able form but such a form is more prone to recognition and processing errors.
Scan forms are typically evaluated by running a pre-marked form through a scanning device to initialize an on board memory with the answer key. Similarly, copy paper based mark-able forms require an evaluator to first open and load into memory those files that identify the location of the mark-able areas and the expected values before processing any scanned images. In both cases, only those images that have their associated answer keys pre-loaded can be processed correctly.
What is lacking, but needed, is a mark-able document that retains the processing accuracy of scan forms but is customizable and less expensive to produce.